He had been gone a long time; it felt like hours though it probably wasn’t.
He walked silently into the room. I saw him moving because the room was dimly lit with the city lights but he barely made a sound. He put something on the kitchen counter and I watched, quiet and secretly fascinated, as his upper body twisted when he pulled off his tee. I held my breath as I saw skin in the moonlight, and even the definition of muscle, and what I saw was nice.
He turned to the bed, walked to it and sat on the side then bent forward and tugged off a boot.
“Please take me home,” I said quietly. I had decided quiet was the way to go, all my other attempts to get my way (yelling, screaming, shouting and struggling), didn’t work so I was trying out other options.
“No,” he said just as quietly, foiling my new tactic and dropping his boot to the floor.
“I need to take out my contacts,” I told him and this was true.
He stopped taking off his second boot then bent down, picked up the first one and tugged it back on.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he got up.
He walked to the tee he threw on the floor, pulled it on and went to the elevator. “I’ll be back,” he said, standing at the elevators.
“Wait!” I called but too late, the doors opened, he disappeared and the light from the elevator was extinguished as the doors closed.
*
This time he wasn’t gone long and came back less silent because he was carrying a rustling bag.
“Where did you go?” I asked as he went back to the counter, threw the bag on it and then again pulled off his tee and dropped it to the floor.
“Contact solution and a case,” he said, coming to the bed, sitting on the edge again and tugging off his boot.
“You can just take me home, I have, like, a million cases there and contact solution.” This was obvious but I pointed it out anyway.
“I’m not taking you home, Ava.” He dropped boot one.
“I don’t understand. Why? Whoever they were, they weren’t shooting at me. No one even knew I was there.”
He dropped boot two. “I know. They were shooting at Vincetti.” He pulled off a sock.
I sucked in breath. This was news.
“They were shooting at Dom?” I whispered, unable to wrap my mind around this fact.
“He isn’t a well-liked guy,” he pulled off the other sock.
This didn’t surprise me, as I explained, Dom was a jerk. But shooting out his living room with an Uzi? That seemed a bit much and this was coming from a woman who was searching his house to try to find evidence to nail him in an upcoming divorce battle.
“Why would they shoot out his living room with an Uzi when he wasn’t there?”
“It wasn’t an Uzi. It was an AK-47. And they were sending a message.”
He had turned toward me and was leaned into me, working at the cuffs.
I sucked in breath again, mainly because Luke’s naked chest was close to my face and it was freaking me out and playing havoc with my vow to stay faithful to my vibrators.
I felt my hands freed and I pulled my arms down, sat up and shook them out. Pins and needles shot up them and I took a deep breath to tamp down my temper. It wouldn’t serve any purpose, I was learning quickly Luke didn’t like my temper and he was a lot stronger than me. He seemed in a mellow mood and I wasn’t going to piss him off; pissing him off wouldn’t get me home and I needed to get home and soon. I figured him going out and buying me contact lens solution meant he thought, for some reason, I was spending the night. My purse was in my Range Rover and I was pretty certain Sissy had called my cell, probably dozens of times, checking in. She was likely panicked. I needed to phone her and quick.
Still, I couldn’t stop myself from saying softly as I rubbed at both of my arms, “That hurt.”
He threw the cuffs on the nightstand, twisted at the waist, grabbed my left wrist and started to massage my arm.
Oh my goodness, Luke’s massaging your arm! Isn’t that sweet? Good Ava trilled in my ear.
Jump him! Rip his pants off! Bad Ava shouted in my other ear.
I ignored my advisors and sat, completely still, and registered how nice, warm and strong Luke’s hands were. They felt good. No, they felt great.
Shit.
“I needed to make sure you were safe,” he told me, thankfully pulling me away from thoughts of his hands feeling great.
“They didn’t shoot out my windows,” I pointed out.
“Then I needed to make sure you didn’t do something stupid.”
Hmm.
One, two, three, four, five… okay, temper under control.
“Now that you know I’m safe and I can promise you I won’t do anything stupid,” Tonight, I thought, but did not say, “Can I please go home?”
“No.”
“Luke!”
His hands went to my armpits, he got up, taking me with him and set my feet on the floor.